Richard Smith was the editor of The BMJ until 2004.
The idea of combining antihypertensive drugs, a statin, and sometimes aspirin into a polypill to prevent heart attacks and strokes is now a dozen years old, but still no drug is licensed in a high income country. This week researchers, funders, regulators, policymakers, and drug manufacturers gathered together in Hamilton, Canada, to review and perhaps […]
I must begin by making clear that I think the BMJ magnificent, much improved from when I was the editor. I particularly applaud the introduction of indepth investigative journalism. I’m also extremely grateful to the journal for publishing my blogs, some of which seem to push close to the edge of sanity. But I want […]
It is a bold and foolish person who advises others how to live, but I can’t resist a little advice. I’m not going to tell you how to be smarter, sexier, stronger, or richer (as I have no idea) but rather how to start the day. My advice is simple: 90 minutes reading good books. […]
The Eastern Mediterranean Region (EMR) of WHO has some of the highest rates of non-communicable disease (NCD) in the world. Six of the countries with the highest rates of diabetes are in the region, half of the women are overweight or obese, and physical activity rates are the lowest in the world. Yet the region […]
“We live in a world of competing sorrows,” said Daniel Moynihan, the American senator. How can policy makers choose among sorrows? One way is with the help of the Copenhagen Consensus, which asks four Nobel laureates in economics and one other distinguished economist to decide how to spend $75 billion in overseas aid over four […]
Financial history is full of bubbles, driven by “our innate inclination to veer from euphoria to despondency.” As I read an account of how bubbles happen in Niall Ferguson’s excellent book The Ascent of Money, I was reminded of how medicines are also prone to bubbles. Indeed, I thought of other human bubbles and decided […]
I’m sitting in first class on the train to Edinburgh with two glasses of red wine inside me when I look across the water to Lindisfarne and suddenly think “Perhaps I could live forever.” This was a revelation because until now I’ve been unequivocal that immortality would be unbearable. It must have been partly the […]
English speakers have been very inventive in finding words and phrases that allow them to avoid the words death and dying, and so we have discovered are people who speak other languages. This seems to be a global phenomenon. We are the kind of people who when we hear somebody say “X has passed away” […]
Ten years ago editors and publishers from the BMJ produced four scenarios on how the future of scientific and medical publishing might look. After I read Des Spence’s column arguing that the BMJ pay wall should be taken down and Peter Suber’s editorial on open access. I thought that it would be fun to revisit […]
Dear prime minister, I heard you give an inspiring speech earlier this week about how Britain was “open for business,” particularly in the life sciences. But when I arrived home I found a desperate email from an Indian friend, a professor of cardiology, describing a most awful plight that the British visa system has inflicted […]